The Secret Gym of Ichiro Suzuki

Yankee Star Uses Special Machines to Stay Flexible; Now He's Bringing Them to the Bronx

By

Brad Lefton

Updated March 5, 2013 10:59 a.m. ET

Kobe, Japan

ENLARGE

Ichiro Suzuki works out on his personal equipment set up in a storage room of a hotel in Kobe, Japan, during the winter.
Hisashi Murayama for The Wall Street Journal

In the middle of sleepless nights, New York Yankees outfielder Ichiro Suzuki sometimes wanders out of the hotel room he lives in during the winter in Japan and seeks solace in an area off limits to other guests.

He jiggles his personal key into the door knob of a storage closet in the back of the parking garage and steps right into his own dream world. Seven specially designed training machines he has delivered here each winter have transformed the drab space typically reserved for the hotel's spare furniture into his personal gym.

In this most unlikely of settings, Ichiro does his most important training. He also credits his toil here for never having spent a day on the disabled list for a muscle-related injury in 12 seasons since coming to America. That's allowed him to rack up 1,278 hits in Japan and another 2,606 in the major leagues—putting him just 116 shy of 4,000 for his career.

ENLARGE

Each of the seven specially designed machines is used to promote strength through flexibility and range of motion.
Hisashi Murayama for The Wall Street Journal

While the 39-year-old Ichiro has become famous for idling his time in the outfield between pitches with deep knee bends and toe touches, he's more devoted to his machines. He says they allow him to stretch and condition what he considers the most crucial muscle groups for baseball—those around the shoulder blades, pelvis, and hip joints—beyond what he can do with simple calisthenics.

One morning this winter in Japan between breaks in his routine, Ichiro said that depending on the time of the year, he might use the machines three times a day. "They're indispensable to me," he said. With normal weight training, he explained, "you're fatigued at the end. But these have a completely opposite, invigorating effect because the movements they require help oxygenate the blood and optimize circulation."

While traditional weight machines strengthen specific areas, he said, "these machines work on the whole body in unison."

Besides the hotel that serves as his off-season residence, he has sets of these machines at his home in New York and at his parents' home in central Japan. This year, he's adding two new locations: the Yankees' Tampa spring training complex and Yankee Stadium. The club agreed to let him place his machines in both facilities' weight rooms.

The equipment is designed by World Wing Enterprise, a Japanese company that researches and develops advanced training concepts. They manage a small chain of gyms across the country that carry their patented equipment, but they normally don't sell the machines to individuals. They made an exception for one loyal customer.

While the machines look like traditional weight machines with stacks of weighted plates and adjustable pegs, they're actually much more. Rather than shortening and tightening muscles, which is a common result in traditional weightlifting, they're designed to lengthen and loosen muscles while attaining greater flexibility and range of motion.

One upper body machine, called the "High Pulley," requires users to reach over their heads to pull down a weight. While these machines are common in gyms, the swiveling parts of Ichiro's machine, as well as the fluidity of its movement, allow him to loosen up his shoulder. He credits this machine for his ability to zing a ball from the outfield to home plate even if there's no time for any warmup throws.

In the back corner of the storage room is the machine Ichiro prizes most: the "Inner Thigh." As he mounts himself on the machine with his legs spread like a sprinter frozen in his leap over a hurdle, Ichiro explains that a well-conditioned lower body is crucial to his game. He builds exceptional range of motion throughout the area around the pelvis and inner thighs as he pushes his legs side to side from the awkward mount aboard the machine.

Ichiro wasn't always devoted to flexibility training. He said that early in his career, he was among the tightest players on his Orix BlueWave team in the Japanese league. In those years, like most of his baseball peers, he was seduced by the fantasy of beefier muscles and became infatuated with weight training, especially in the off-season.

But then he noticed that as his time for weights lessened with the demands of the baseball season, his batting swing became freer and faster. He said he came to associate the macho bulk that resulted from weightlifting with a slower swing and stiffer movement in the field. He went in search of a replacement for isolated weight training and in 1999, discovered these machines. He hasn't lifted a weight in a traditional way ever since.

When Dana Cavalea, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator, saw Ichiro's machines, he said, he knew immediately they would promote range of motion, flexibility and strength.
Hisashi Murayama for The Wall Street Journal

His goal in training, he added, is to create flexibility and range of motion to help him reach his maximum power. "I used to think I could only derive such power from weights, but now I look at such training as gratuitous and unnecessary," he said. "I have a better ability to maximize my potential without that kind of strength and, certainly, my bat speed is greater now than before."

Since joining the Yankees last season, Ichiro has gained a new admirer in Dana Cavalea, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator. Cavelea visited Ichiro's Manhattan apartment this off-season for a first-hand look at his machines.

Given Ichiro's overall athleticism, his flexibility and his longevity as a player, Cavalea said, he wanted to know what his routine was like, and whether the team should adopt it. When he saw Ichiro's machines, he said, he knew immediately they would promote range of motion, flexibility and strength.

"After assessing players year after year and day by day, I know a lot of them have limitations in terms of their overall flexibility," Cavaela said. "If these machines are built in a way that helps to enhance flexibility, that's something to think about."

Cavalea helped Ichiro convince the Yankees to find space for the equipment at Yankee Stadium. He said he wants to learn enough about the equipment and its methodology to eventually instruct other players how to use it. For now, though, he said he's content adding a few modest changes inspired by Ichiro's routine into the Yankees overall stretching and training.

This year, Cavalea's offering elastic bands to players in the weight room to promote flexibility. And as the Yankees assembled on the grass for the group stretch on the first day of spring training, he introduced a new movement where they're told to flex their shoulder back rhythmically with their arm bent at the elbow.

As Cavaela barked out the instructions, he referred to the drill as "Ichi's shoulder."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.